How to Save Money and Speed Up Transactions on Bitcoin

[GreatArkansas]

I remember the days when I started to use Bitcoin and send or receive Bitcoins from my wallet, sometimes I wonder why the transaction fees are high and sometimes why the transaction takes a very long time to confirm.

Later on, along the road of learning Bitcoin, I realized how these transactions work.

Why do transaction fees matter?
Speed of transaction and cost efficiency, of course, who doesn't want an almost instant and almost free transaction fee in all of our transactions online?


Tips for how to manage Bitcoin transaction fees:

1. Using a fee estimator:
Most of the time before I make my transaction, even low or high, I always check the current fee estimator in some platform, (there is already built-in fee estimators on your wallet).
Most of the time I used bitcoinfees.net
mempool.space - this is also good

Here are the others that I got from another topic:

(...)
1. https://mempool.space/docs/api/rest
2. https://bitcoinjobs.com/fee-calculator
3. https://whatthefee.io/
4. https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),24h,weight
5. https://bitcoinfees.net/

2. Using Bech32 address:
This is the new format of Bitcoin address that is advanced and will make the transaction fees lower when you send Bitcoin from Bech32 BTC address.

3. Batch your transactions:
This is only applicable if you want to send to multiple addresses, instead of creating multiple transactions on multiple addresses, you will just have to create 1 transaction, which will save a lot of fees.

4. Use lightning network:
This is new and for some people, it's difficult to setup a lightning network, to send or receive, but for smaller and more frequent transactions, using the lightning network is the savior, you can get almost instant and almost free transactions.

5. Check transaction details before confirming to send:
This will help you to confirm how much time you will wait or expect that the transaction will confirmed, some wallets have this feature before you confirm the transaction from your wallet, you can check the fee, the estimate of confirmation time, and some fee adjustments.


I hope this will help us, especially for those who are learning Bitcoin.

Have other tips on managing Bitcoin fees? Feel free to share and add more below and let's help each other!

[Adbitco]

Nowadays people don't really care about the transaction fee what care about is let them be the first to join block to confirm their transaction as quick as possible, lot of people don't know that there is need to monitor their fees before sending out their bitcoin to the next person and most importantly it's good to enable RBF that is if they aren't sending from a close source wallet like trustwallet then when I tried using it I couldn't find RBF. But if using wallet like Electrum and some other open source wallet it would be good, I know those that talk more on the technical sections can put more light on this.

[Dave1]

If you can add this one if you have a telegram account:

@BitcoinFeesAlert_bot

So instead of checking it on a website, a simple command of /fees will do it for you.

@Adbitco - but people need to check the fees first right? they need to know what are the current fees and maybe + few sats above it to get confirmation on the next block.

[BlackBoss_]

Know what wallets to use, address types to use and know sites, bots to get information of Bitcoin mempools are all good practices but sometimes people will need to use Bitcoin transaction accelerators, free or paid to boost their unconfirmed transactions.

They need to pay attention and always use Replace By Fee RBF opt-in for their transactions, to be able to Bump the fee by themselves and don't have to depend on any free or paid tx accelerator.

Bitcoin acceleration services - Fee comparison
https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator
https://www.antpool.com/txAccelerate
https://www.f2pool.com/user/tx-acc
https://pool.binance.com/en/acceleration
https://mempool.space/accelerator

[Luzin]

Know what wallets to use, address types to use and know sites, bots to get information of Bitcoin mempools are all good practices but sometimes people will need to use Bitcoin transaction accelerators, free or paid to boost their unconfirmed transactions.

They need to pay attention and always use Replace By Fee RBF opt-in for their transactions, to be able to Bump the fee by themselves and don't have to depend on any free or paid tx accelerator.

Bitcoin acceleration services - Fee comparison
https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator
https://www.antpool.com/txAccelerate
https://www.f2pool.com/user/tx-acc
https://pool.binance.com/en/acceleration
https://mempool.space/accelerator

Of course, the condition of transfer fees is very important to pay attention to. Especially like me with small assets. Nowadays scalability weaknesses are a major issue. Increasing scalability will make the network more vulnerable to security.

My experience of some of the sites above is very helpful when the transaction process time. This means that we can adjust fees as needed. Another way I usually do it is to transact when I see people's activities. I tend to make transactions where many people are busy working offline. This makes the network fewer users and leads to cheaper costs.

Regarding Lihtgning, yes it's a solution but he's only suitable for small transfers. They also do not have a definitive solution for large volume transactions.

[Davidvictorson]

But if using wallet like Electrum and some other open source wallet it would be good, I know those that talk more on the technical sections can put more light on this.

I make sure to always check the transaction fee before any transaction. When the fees are high and the transaction is not urgent, I weigh it on a scale of preference to know if it is worth it. If it isn't worth it at that point I either wait till sometime in the midnight when there usually a drop to make the transaction or I don't make the transaction at all , waiting it out for a couple of days.

If you can add this one if you have a telegram account:
@BitcoinFeesAlert_bot
So instead of checking it on a website, a simple command of /fees will do it for you.

Thanks I have added this bot to my telegram. In the coming days I'll e able to weigh if i prefer this bot or just checking the website memepool.space.

[_act_]

Regarding Lihtgning, yes it's a solution but he's only suitable for small transfers. They also do not have a definitive solution for large volume transactions.

It depends on what you mean as small transfer. I still use lightning network to conveniently send up to 0.005 BTC which is about $330 worth of bitcoin when bitcoin is $66000. You are right but I just want to make it clear because some people may think the small transfer may not be more than $50 but it can be more than.

[Pandorak]

[...] 4. Use lightning network:
This is new and for some people, it's difficult to setup a lightning network, to send or receive, but for smaller and more frequent transactions, using the lightning network is the savior, you can get almost instant and almost free transactions. [...]

Lightning Network or better known as LN is not the native bitcoin network, it is the L2 of bitcoin itself. In the fourth point you should use the words "L2 Bitcoin", because not only LN is possible now, we also have L-BTC as L2, in bitcoin it requires 10 minutes for block time, while in L-BTC it only requires just 1 minutes. There are many differences between LN & L-BTC, anyone who wants to know more can read the official article from Liquid ^[1].

[1] https://blog.liquid.net/six-differences-between-liquid-and-lightning/

[Lucius]

I would just add something that many (especially inexperienced beginners) completely overlook when trying to calculate the amount of the fee and the total price of the transaction. It's not just about the fee (sat/vB), but how much input and output you have, because some people are very surprised when their wallet shows them that they have to pay a lot for a transaction, and at the same time, the fees are low.

You can avoid this problem if you avoid dust transactions or if you use the coin control feature in your wallets. Here is an example of how to do it in Electrum -> How to spend specific UTXOs in Electrum.

[Hatchy]

Know what wallets to use, address types to use and know sites, bots to get information of Bitcoin mempools are all good practices but sometimes people will need to use Bitcoin transaction accelerators, free or paid to boost their unconfirmed transactions.

Some wallets actually increases their fees for each transactions. That why its good to get confirmation for other sources so you can place a right fee and avoid spending too much on little transactions. Also it's good to use wallet that supports adjustable fees. Thats wallet like electrum or bluewallet. I used mycelium in the past, till I got fed up with their high fee rate and switched to bluewallet for my small transactions, where I was able to input my own vbyte. And when even place transaction I use the mempool space to see the current fee. then also we have the Mempool Observer Topic where fee buddy displays the estimated fees for the last 3 days. Currently it's posted today for the last 3days

     

• fastestFee: 4 sat/vB
• halfHourFee: 4 sat/vB
• hourFee: 4 sat/vB
• economyFee: 2 sat/vB
• minimumFee: 1 sat/vB

I was surprised not to have seen it mentioned already here on this topic. It's actually a very nice initiative by our own forum member @ bitmover. Guess not much users are aware of it.

[BitMaxz]

I am more confident about using mempool.space and jochen-hoenicke.de to calculate the best fees with the current network congestion, today while writing this post the fastest on both of them is 11sat/vb+ for 1vMB below but the other fee estimator shows only 5 sats that may lead to a stuck transaction.

So for newbies, I suggest only use mempool.space to easily calculate the best-recommended fee, and for advanced users jochen-hoenicke.de if you know exactly how it works.
Also, take note of multiple UTXO and inputs it also increase fee if you have large uTXO that is why it's always recommended to keep consolidate uTXO so that when network is congested the fees are not so expensive just like what happen to those who earn from claiming reward on faucets.

[bitmover]

I was surprised not to have seen it mentioned already here on this topic. It's actually a very nice initiative by our own forum member @ bitmover. Guess not much users are aware of it.

Thank all this information comes from mempool.space,  the best source of information regarding bitcoin fees.


Just use the minimum utxo as possible when fees are high, and only consolidate them if the fees are very low

I am not consolidating now as I think fees will get even lower ..

[dkbit98]

Another option is to use Liquid Network for faster transactions and minimal fees.
It is much easier to use Liquid than Lightning but they can be compatible and both work together with Aqua wallet.
Another advantage is that L-BTC can easily be swapped to L-USDT and back to Bitcoin main chain.
 

[Doan9269]

I will have to confess about one thing i like about this thread, its on the information weight it carries in meeting the demands of some of the newbies and other bitcoin users, who feels the bitcoin network is getting worse each time they heard about high cost for making transactions, even though as of now, the transaction fee of bitcoin network is very low and affording, this thread will definitely help in subsequent times we may have something related to mempool being congested and making transactions becomes a fear because of the high fee, all the information here will help during such period on how we could safe our money on cost for making a transaction.

[khaled0111]

Most of the time I used bitcoinfees.net

I've never used this tool before so I checked it and I don't think it's that accurate. Bitcoinfees.net suggests paying 8 sat/vb for the transaction to be included in the next block while mempool.space and Electrum estimator suggest paying only 5 sats/vb!

Using the coin control (unfortunately not all wallets support this featur) and consolidating your inputs whenever possible, can help save on fees.

[_act_]

Most of the time I used bitcoinfees.net

I've never used this tool before so I checked it and I don't think it's that accurate. Bitcoinfees.net suggests paying 8 sat/vb for the transaction to be included in the next block while mempool.space and Electrum estimator suggest paying only 5 sats/vb!

You are right about this. The site is not accurate. It is accurate for the one it indicates the transactions to be confirmed in less than 20 minutes but not accurate for lower priorities which are less than 4 sat/vbyte. Mempool is not yet less congested down to less than 4 sat/vbyte. Anyone that take it will see his transaction not get confirmed.

I prefer to use https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/ which is most accurate for me.

Using the coin control (unfortunately not all wallets support this featur) and consolidating your inputs whenever possible, can help save on fees.

There are many bitcoin wallets that is having coin control. The ones that do not have it could be avoided.

[GreatArkansas]

I was surprised not to have seen it mentioned already here on this topic. It's actually a very nice initiative by our own forum member @ bitmover. Guess not much users are aware of it.

Thank all this information comes from mempool.space,  the best source of information regarding bitcoin fees.


Just use the minimum utxo as possible when fees are high, and only consolidate them if the fees are very low

I am not consolidating now as I think fees will get even lower ..

I added the mempool.space in the first OP, it is also a good platform to use to identify the fees, as they also have an explorer and different analyses about the transaction fees that can be used at the current moment.
Thank you for this.

[tranthidung]

I added the mempool.space in the first OP, it is also a good platform to use to identify the fees, as they also have an explorer and different analyses about the transaction fees that can be used at the current moment.

You can add this mempool observing site too.

• https://mempool.jhoenicke.de/#BTC,24h,weight
• It is as same as https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),24h,weight
• From donation addresses, Github link, two sites are from a same owner.

[Findingnemo]

I added the mempool.space in the first OP, it is also a good platform to use to identify the fees, as they also have an explorer and different analyses about the transaction fees that can be used at the current moment.
Thank you for this.

Mempool space is more accurate as well as easily understandable due to their interface that might be slightly difficult on others, bitcoinfees often gave wrong estimate so I just avoid it for that particular reason.

Apart from that we can save fees only if our wallet let us use the customized fee, I am using Electrum and their mempool option is more efficient and accurate that ETA or Static.

[khaled0111]

Apart from that we can save fees only if our wallet let us use the customized fee, I am using Electrum and their mempool option is more efficient and accurate that ETA or Static.

The fee is practically the fee rate multiplied by the transaction size. Therefore, to reduce the fee you need to reduce one or both of the latter.
To effectively reduce the the fee rate, you should use a wallet that allows you customize the fee rate (as you suggested) and choose which UTXOs to spend (coin control).
Electrum is a good choice and its mempool fee estimator is very accurate. You should use ETA only if you want to be 100% sure you will be included in the very next block.